Falling into the Drink

[Michiel]

I've been sailing for 12 years, and proudly claimed I had never fell into the water accidently. Well, until this fall. I was attempting to take the outboard off the dinghy while anchored off Catalina Island when I suppose I was leaning too far on one side, and plop- the dinghy overturned. Here I am in the water with my clothes on- wallet and cell phone in pockets (just returned from shore), engine in one hand. Well, my wallet managed to float out of my pockets and then sank in 50 ft of water, my cell phone was obviiously ruined, but I did save the engine!
Lets hear some more good stories!

*michiel

[Dave A]

I was living on my boat, Pearson 35, in FL and I had stepped on and off from the bow to the finger pier more times than I could count. One day coming back from work, carring a brief case of course, I managed to miscalculate something and next thing I'm in the drink trying to grab the things floating out of the open brief case and dive for the stuff that sank. That night the cabin had every surface covered with drying papers etc. Of course some things were never recovered, it was one way to clean out a lot of junk and I did need a new calculator, I guess.

[TejasSailer]

It was probably about 1970, and my wife and took two friends out in San Diego Bay on our Pacific Catamaran (P-Cat), an 18' sloop rigged cat that apparently was done in by Hobie. While tacking, I essentially stepped overboard between the hulls. About this time an aircaft carrier was coming in - the reason I was tacking - and the cat with no one on the helm was heading directly on a collision course. My wife hadn't sailed much, and in truth I hadn't either, but she took the tiller and somehow was able to came back for me on a smoking reach. I was wearing a PFD and paniced, thinking was going to be run down because I couldn't submerge. I wasn't run down, and it took a couple passes before they were able to throw me a line while underway. It was almost like a frogman retrieval - I grapped the line and went almost instantously from zero to how many knots I don't know. I pulled myself hand-over-hand, finally climbed aboard and complimented my wife on her cool handling in proximity to the aircraft carrier.

She hadn't seen it until then, but there were a lot of sailors on the rail enjoying the entertainment.

[feta]

i have only been sailing for 4 months and the other crew has been boasting he never fell in and hes 54.so i sail with a skipper and this guy and he asked did we wont to come and sail his boat,a dart ,was fun its pretty quick.so the traveller got stuck and hes on the side of the boat and the rope snapped and in he went......needless to say we laughed out load